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sparkleytone

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Oct 28, 2001
2,308
0
Greensboro, NC
hey i just thought i'd post this for any UNIX junkies out here. i know i've always gotten a wierd satisfaction watching my linux boxes boot in a pure text fashion. now i have the same on my mac.

sudo nvram boot-args="-v"

that will do it for you and now your mac will boot with the cool quasiretrofuturistic textmode.

sudo nvram boot-args=""

turns it back off.
 
Nothing is ever 100% safe, i mean, my friend thought condoms were safe but he was wearing one and got hit by a bus.

Ensign
 
Yes you simply type this in the terminal. No you do not have to be logged in as root. That is what sudo does. Gives you a very temporary access as root. This is why it will ask for your password. And yes it should be safe. I do it myself quite a bit. Just don't enter any other commands after using sudo that you don't fully understand. For an explanation of sudo type 'man sudo' in your terminal window.

-Carrierwave
 
hehe im glad you like it. all it does is read the -v flag. that just means verbose mode. so it tells you anything and everything that the machine does on boot. i'm sure ill go back to normal boot screens sometime, but i like the novelty of it feeling like linux until it gets to my desktop.
 
Originally posted by verbose101
hehehe, for me the novelty will probably ware off to :D But for now I'm luvin it!
Got any other cool/useful UNIX tips anyone?
Depends if you use *nix as much as you use the GUI. I've got tips galore, but most of them are for the csh/tcsh enviroment and don't have much of a "cool" factor.

Your -v switch is the same AFAIK as holding down cmd-V at bootup, except what you did might boot it up verbose every time.

If you liked verbose mode, you might like OpenFirmware— boot holding down opt-cmd-o-f. You can't do much here, just like Unix, if you don't know the commands. And also just like Unix, you can screw things up here.
 
on the other hand, you can just hold cmd-v while starting up and it will do it for that startup only...just if you want to see text once in a while...
 
Originally posted by mc68k

If you liked verbose mode, you might like OpenFirmware— boot holding down opt-cmd-o-f. You can't do much here, just like Unix, if you don't know the commands. And also just like Unix, you can screw things up here.

Pandora's box...

You can render a machine useless in OF if you aren't careful (with relative ease).

I would not recommend poking around in OF for fun, especially if you don't have a second machine to google the answers after you break your first!
 
what does reset all in OF do (I'm not sure if thats the right one....the guys at the genius bar were talking about it when i had my powerbook there)?
 
Originally posted by Choppaface
what does reset all in OF do (I'm not sure if thats the right one....the guys at the genius bar were talking about it when i had my powerbook there)?

I'm no mac pro, but I would guess that it resets the firmware to the original configuration...
 
i tried that command in terminal and it didn't seem to work. you just type it and press enter? and then you'll see the changes when you restart, right?
 
Originally posted by G4scott


I'm no mac pro, but I would guess that it resets the firmware to the original configuration...

reset-NVRAM does that. reset-all actually exits and reboots your Mac.
I wouldn't futz around with OpenFirmware, though. As previously said, you can seriously mangle your machine very easily this way.
 
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